


Six Ways from Sunday

by Breadbot



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Violence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Previous child abuse, Slow Burn, Temporary Character Death, Time Travel, blue lions route originally, it gets undone, post timeskip spoilers, very slight AU with the lance of ruin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-16
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24211165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Breadbot/pseuds/Breadbot
Summary: An unfortunate series of events in Gronder Field cause Felix and Bernadetta to time travel backwards five years.The only problem? They fought on opposite sides of the war.Or: Where Bernadetta wants to return to the future, and Felix wants to stop the war before it ever began.ON HIATUS
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Bernadetta von Varley
Comments: 14
Kudos: 47





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for visiting this fic! 
> 
> Please be careful and read the tags! There is temporary character death in this chapter, and the setting is a battlefield. Stay safe guys!
> 
> On another note, I just really adore the supports between these two and decided to write something about them. I hope you all enjoy it!

Felix does not want to fight.

It is unusual for him to want anything less than a good battle, but now Felix feels something uneasy curl in his stomach. It’s as if every fiber of his being is pulling him back, freezing his feet to the ground. His heart stutters and jumps to his throat in a way it hadn’t for a long time as the crimson army approaches.

He thinks he sees friends among those soldiers. He sees hints of blue, flickers or purple in the masses before they’re gone. Felix forces his hands steady as the ground trembles under his feet. 

At one time, he thought he wouldn’t have minded striking down his former classmates. But that was before the bridge, before he saw Ferdinand’s life bleed from his eyes, his sunlit hair splayed out across the ground, mingling with his blood. That was before he saw Lorenz die with a bitter smile on his lips, falling limply onto the lands he swore to protect.

Felix glances to the other side, to the army swathed in gold. He thinks he sees Hilda among them, and Raphael, and Ignatz. He turns the other way, and manages to spot Dorothea and Linhardt and Edelgard herself. Idly, he wonders who will have to die this time. 

He wonders if he will die.

But he pulls himself from such thoughts just as the horns blow and the world explodes into chaos around him. Fireballs rain down from the skies as the professor’s voice barely raises over the screams and sounds of metal against metal. 

The order is clear enough. Get to Edelgard. End the fight.

Felix sticks as close as he can to Byleth in the surrounding chaos, straining his ears for her orders. He sees the red of Sylvain’s hair, and strikes down the group of soldiers who surrounded him. Sylvain gives him a brief nod, and they soldier forward, slowly carving a path to Edelgard.

Felix kills and kills until his blade gleams red. At one time he would have felt exhilaration but now, now he only feels empty, as if something had stolen his heart and scraped it clean. He wonders when he had become nothing more than a lifeless weapon when an arrow whizzes over his head, and he returns to the fray.

A bolt of lightning strikes the ground next to him, and Felix turns to see Lysithea. Her glowing palms shake as they lock eyes. The world fades around them.

And then, very deliberately, she turns away. Felix does the same, and while he knows it is weak, he cannot find it within himself to kill the girl who once shoved cake into his arms.

He is lucky, for a while. They manage to cross the bridge and fend off those defending it with minimal losses. He sees no more familiar faces as he maneuvers across the battlefield, leaving death in his wake. 

At least, until he sees her.

He spots her among the group of enemy soldiers, firing arrows into the crowd with startling accuracy. Purple hair. Bernadetta, the girl who deflected his sword with her fists once upon a time, who holed herself in her room and squeaked at anyone who looked at her. 

She catches him among the battlefield, and her eyes widen. Quickly, in a flash she pulls out her bow and fires. Had it not been for his reflexes, Felix would have been dead many times over. He knows it well within his heart, but he cannot stop the sinking feeling of dread from pooling in his stomach.

Here is a fight he cannot run from.

He readies his sword as she fires again and again, and rushes towards the soldiers that surrounded her. She hesitates as he makes quick work of them, striking them down with deadly precision. She fired again, and Felix ducks as the arrow flies overhead. 

He advances forward cautiously. A single mistake could mean death. Bernadetta backs away, her eyes trained on him, a silhouette strung across her back that could only belong to a hero’s relic.

“Where did you get that weapon?” He calls out to her, hoping to distract her. But her grip only tightens on her bow and her eyes narrow. Felix can see a hint of steel in her eyes as she stares at him and does not answer. 

“It was stolen a long time ago,” he growls, recognizing it only as the Lance of Ruin. “That belongs to Sylvain.” Bernadetta stumbles backwards as he approaches, her eyes widening.

“No! No, Lady Edelgard gave this to me!” Her voice wavers, “It wasn’t stolen!” There were many things wrong with that statement, but Felix debates none of them as he uses her lapse of concentration to charge forward. Bernadetta lets the arrow fly from her grip but Felix only steps to the side. 

In the same moment Bernadetta draws the lance from her back and charges at his opening. Felix deflects the charge with his blade, and steps back, marveling over her form. She was obviously skilled with lances, and light on her feet. She would not die easily. 

Maybe there was always this steel underneath her nervous demeanor. He ponders this was she rushes towards him, as he brings his sword up to meet her. There was a spark in her eyes, born of the desperation to survive. 

_Those,_ his brother had once told him, _were the most dangerous kind._

Felix didn’t doubt him. Her strikes were forceful and unrelenting. She was a whirlwind of dizzying movement, and it was difficult to parry her blows. They traded strikes that never connected, interlocked in a battle of equal wills.

And then there was a harrowing scream, rising up across the battlefield. Felix startled and Bernadetta did too, because that was a cry of agony and insurmountable pain, and it was so, so familiar-

And then Felix saw, he saw the professor cradling a crown or golden hair close to her as her shoulders shook with sobs, and there was blood, Dimitri’s blood, splattered across her face. He stood there for a few soundless moments before he remembered himself.

It was Felix who recovered first. His sword clattered to the ground as he grabbed the lance and wrenched it from her grasp. 

“No!” Bernadetta cried as she grasped the relic, pulling it towards her, and Felix had half a mind to stab her with it before-

Something shifted in the air. The very skies turned thick and layered and heavy across his shoulders, and it felt like grief and pain and rang like an ancient song. It was powerful, powerful and overwhelming and Felix couldn’t breathe, his lungs felt as if they were being crumbled by a gauntleted fist and he gasped as the lance in his arms thrummed and trembled in his grasp, growing lighter and lighter until all Felix saw was white. From somewhere else he heard a faint scream that grew dimmer and dimmer until it faded from his ears.

And then, there was nothing at all.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix and Bernadetta wake up in the past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Omg guys this chapter was so HARD to write! I kept going and rewriting it over and over again. Finally, I have something I’m moderately pleased with!
> 
> Please enjoy!
> 
> (P.S. prepare for angst :D The comfort will come soon enough...probably.)

Bernadetta wakes up to a familiar ceiling.

She relaxes into her covers. Her dorm room is illuminated by sunlight that filters through the windows, spilling across her projects and stray papers that were scattered across the floor. 

It feels like safety, like a little alcove of her own to guard her against the weight of the world. 

And then she remembers.

She hadn’t been here ever since the war started. She would have been killed if she even set a foot on its premises, so why was she here? Why was she swathed in blankets, and why hadn’t anyone killed her yet!?

She nearly jumps as someone knocks on her door.

“Bernadetta, you must come out of your room! Lady Edelgard awaits, and we shall not disappoint her!”

No.

It can’t be-Bernadetta knows that voice, it was the smiling voice of Ferdinand who had died long ago on that bridge, who couldn’t possibly be alive and walking around and talking to her through her door-

She knows because she saw his body, she saw his white face and still form and she knew, she knew he wasn’t coming back.

She is still caught in disbelief when the knock comes again. There is a dead man beyond her door, but she musters up the courage to crack it open through trembling hands.

She meets orange eyes and a bright smile and knows, _that’s him, that’s Ferdinand._ His hair is short and his face is softer than it was, but he still grins all the same when he sees her.

“Ah, Bernadetta, I am glad to see I persuaded you to leave your room! Professor Manuela would have been most unhappy otherwise. Please, allow me to escort you to our classroom.”

She manages to nod, and almost flinches backwards as he wraps a gentle hand around her arm.

It feels surreal as he guides her down the halls she had long forgotten. She peers at students swathed in red and blue and gold, all mingling together as if they weren’t trying to kill each other just moments before.

She remembers Gronder Field, striking down enemies, standing by Edelgard’s side. She remembers fighting Felix, the surety in her actions, and the unwavering faith in her cause.

Then the air turned heavy and the lance glowed and glowed and tore it all away.

Where she was on steady ground, where she had found something to believe in, she is now adrift an empty sea, surrounded by the dead who had came back to life, as if they had never been dead at all. 

As they approach the doors to the classroom, Bernadetta suddenly wants to be anywhere, anywhere else. Nervousness builds and builds within her until she feels it will overflow, because she doesn’t belong here, not with her friends who aren’t her friends anymore, not with the boy who had died on the bridge.

 _She needs to go home,_ she thinks resolutely as Ferdinand reaches for the knob on the classroom doors. _She has to return to Edelgard and fight the war to its end._

But then she realizes with a sinking, dreadful feeling, that she doesn’t know how.

—

Felix knew something was off from the moment he laid eyes on his sword.

It was far too thin, as if it had never been reinforced at all. When he picks it up the weight is all wrong in his hands, but it is still his sword all the same. 

This was not the sword he left behind on the battlefield. This sword had not been broken and mended again, it had not been drenched in blood quite yet. The hilt was not frayed, it looked perfectly new, and that was when Felix knew something was horribly, terribly wrong. 

He makes his way down the stairs of the dorms, rushing past the monastery halls that were surprisingly crowded, and even more surprisingly intact. He spots white hair and thinks Lysithea, Lysithea should not be here before he runs straight into Sylvain’s chest.

Only-it isn’t Sylvain. His face was far too rounded, and his eyes were crinkled into a carefree smile that Felix hadn’t seen since the war started.

“Woah there Felix, what has you in such a hurry?” His voice is the same, but it held less weight that Felix remembered. He knows, he knows that _this is not his Sylvain._

The gentle teasing morphs into concern. “Hey, are you okay?” 

It was such a simple question.

Felix should’ve been able to answer it with a quick sharp-tongued comment but when he tries to speak no words come out. “I-“ he falters, and he hates that he can’t articulate his jumbled thoughts, as messy as they were. 

“I’m going to the training grounds,” he finally manages, and he stalks off quickly because he can’t look Sylvain in the eye, not when he was so young and carefree.

Felix finds the training grounds, but his refuge is already taken. His breath catches in his chest as he spots a crown of blonde hair whirling in the light.

For a brief moment, he sees a man with one eye spinning on the battlefield, forcing his lance through a soldier’s throat with a smile-

“Ah, Felix!” Dimitri smiles at the sight of him. Felix backs away as he approaches. The prince flickers into a beast and back again, and Felix holds up the sword that is not his sword in warning.

“Stay back!” He hisses, and Dimitri halts. Slowly, he raises his arms up in a gesture of peace, looking at him as if _he_ was the feral beast instead. 

“Felix-“ Dimitri starts, but Felix is already running, running as far as he can away from the boar, choking down the words that bubble up in his throat.

 _I saw you die,_ he wants to say. _I saw you die, just minutes ago._

But in the end he runs away, and Dimitri does not follow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix gains his bearings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! I just wanted to say you’re all awesome, and thank you for reading this!
> 
> Felix chapter here! He’s an angry boi and he’s still trying to figure stuff out, but big plot will happen soon 😀
> 
> Thank you YellowJewl for spell checking it!

Felix finds himself in the greenhouse.

It was empty and quiet, the perfect hiding place. He sits down and leans against the sides of the wall, staring at the flowers.

As he fights of the initial wave of panic, he berates himself. He should’ve stood his ground. At least then he wouldn’t have looked so suspicious to the boar, or to Sylvain.

And while he knows that isn’t his Sylvain, it’s Sylvain nevertheless. No one else could capture that crease of his lips or the playful, insufferable look in his eyes. By extension, that had to mean Dimitri was himself as well.

But that fact is much harder to swallow, because Felix saw the body and the blood that pooled out onto the grass. This Dimitri hadn’t forfeited his princely mask quite yet, he had two blue eyes and a thread of sanity left. 

Felix realizes then that he was somehow thrown back into the past, with memories of a war that hadn’t arrived yet. Everyone he knew was a child, and when he stares down at his hands he knows that is true to himself as well.

Smooth fingers and unscarred palms stare back at up him, and then he realizes his limbs are shorter than what he is used to, and a monastery uniform that he hadn’t worn in years suddenly wraps around his form. 

The lance. It had to be the lance’s fault, but for the life of him Felix can’t figure out how.

“You’re needed at the Professor’s seminar.” 

Felix is jolted from his thoughts by the calm voice of Dedue at the entrance.

“Did Dimitri send you?” he says accusingly as he rises to his feet, but Dedue only looks surprised.

“No, the Professor did.”

Felix stares for a long moment and Dedue holds his gaze evenly, before he lets his fingers fall from the hilt of his sword.

“I’ll go,” he says eventually.

Dedue nods before he walks out, and Felix is left to follow.

—

Blue, not green.

That is the first thing Felix notices when he walks into the classroom. 

The professor has blue hair and blue eyes, and somehow looks entirely different from the professor that he knew.

Dedue slips into place next to Dimitri, who stares his way. Felix does not stare back. He doesn’t even look in his direction.

He plops himself down in the far corner of the classroom that is empty and far away from Sylvain, and Byleth starts the lecture.

Felix had forgotten the sound of the professor’s voice echoing through the classroom walls. It was different than hearing her shout orders out from the depths of a battlefield. It made her into a beacon in the still classroom, where she was just a part of the chaos in a fight.

She looks different, too. Her her face is blank as she lectures, as if all of her emotions were locked behind a stone wall. It doesn’t feel right. He knows the professor with joy on her lips, with fury behind her eyes, with sorrow dripping down her cheeks as her father bleeds out in her arms.

He is struck with the thought, that maybe he can make sure that never happens. Maybe Jeralt never has to die. He wonders if he can prevent Monica from being saved, if he can reveal Tomas to the others before it is too late, if Remire never has to burn.

He wants to save them all. He doesn’t want the children who sit all around him to face the terror of war, he doesn’t want to watch them suffer as their lives are torn from them a second time.

Not again.

“Felix, it’s time to leave.”

He is brought back to an empty classroom, where Dimitri‘s blue eyes burn into him. His eyes brim with concern, and it makes Felix sick to his stomach.

“Thanks,” he says shortly. He stands to leave before a hand catches his shoulder.

“Felix,” Dimitri starts, “Is everything alright? You haven’t been acting like yourself ever since this morning. Even Sylvain says you’ve been acting oddly-“

“Sylvain can keep his concern to himself,” Felix spits back, and it is so _easy_ to let anger wrap around his shoulders again. “There’s nothing wrong. I’m fine.”

With those words he shrugs Dimitri’s hand off of his shoulder, and brushes past Dedue by the entrance.

It was almost funny, how the beast was concerned for _him._ Months ago he had hid around a pillar, watching the beast go mad in that church. He watched him crush a man’s skull with his hands to get to Edelgard, and he later watched him die with a blade in his chest when he failed.

The boar was always destined to fall.

Felix wonders if he can fix that, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bernadetta’s chapter is next!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bernadetta does things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m sorry for not updating for a few days, I had to go read some awesome fics and sadly got distracted 😔

Bernadetta can’t face any of them.

It is a lucky thing that the desks face forward because all of their eyes are trained on the board, on the flowing lecture, on the papers in front of them and the quills in their hands. They have no reason to look at Bernadetta, and she has no reason to look at them.

It is better that way, because then Bernadetta can pretend that she wasn’t six years into the past, that she was not surrounded by children who knew nothing of war.

But when she does manage to look at them, she finds she cannot stop. She traces their smooth faces and large eyes and cheeks that haven’t quite lost all of their baby-fat yet, and something inside of her wails.

She needs to go back. She knows this like an anthem in her heart, like a shining ball of hope to cling to. She needs to go back where everything is right again, because seeing Ferdinand again when she spent days locked away in her room, convincing herself he was dead, it was wrong. Seeing Edelgard clothed in the uniform of a schoolgirl, lacking her sharp horns-it was wrong. 

Professor Manuela, who had joined the opposite side of the war so many years ago, stood before her. Dorothea still donned her hat proudly and Linhardt still slept soundly without any wounds to heal and Caspar was still so impulsive without the understanding he gained from years and years of bloodshed.

She needs to go back, because they are not the same. They are similar to her classmates, to her allies, but they are not them.

When Manuela ceases to talk and the people around blur into movement, Bernadetta goes with them. She follows the crowd out the door, and is lost as they disperse into different directions. 

“Bernadetta!” Dorothea smiles from behind her, and Bernadetta starts. “You don’t mind if I call you Bern, do you?”

Bernadetta meets wide green eyes and drops her gaze to the floor. “Yeah, you can call me that,” she says, her voice coming out very small.

Dorothea, unperturbed, continues to beam. “Great! So I was thinking we could practice magic together, only if you wanted to of course, as kind of a get-to-know-each-other thing.” 

A practice session with Dorothea is the last thing she wants to be a part of right now. She doesn’t want to be forced to socialize and be exposed to more children and see dead people walking any longer. She can’t bear Dorothea’s enthusiasm, or her innocent eyes unweighted upon by the cry of war. 

But then she thinks and she realizes that magic might be the key to all of her problems. It must have been magic to make the air laden with sorrow, to make the lance glow. 

And so regretfully, Bernadetta nods in agreement. “I’ll do it,” she says quietly, and flinches backwards as victory lights up on Dorothea’s face.

 _It’s so she can go back,_ she reminds herself, but even that does not blunt the sinking feeling in her chest.

—

It is clear from the start that Bernadetta has no affinity for magic.

Dorothea is the best teacher she could be, but even that cannot help her. Magic is finicky, slipping from her grasp when it manages to well up from inside of her like sand through her fingers. 

Bernadetta thinks with frustration that bows and lances were so much easier. The familiar weight of a lance was at least tangible, and the string of a bow fits in her fingers like an old friend. 

This was her fault, she thinks. It is her fault for hesitating in those moments in Gronder field, for just standing there when Felix struck down the battalion around her. She could have let the arrow fly and she wouldn’t be in this mess, but instead she held her fire out of concern for the soldiers who were already dead, or some lingering sentiment for her former classmate.

She knows she should’ve shot Felix down right where he stood. But instead she was weak, like the Bernadetta she left behind before pledging herself to Edelgard’s cause. She was a child again in those moments, no matter how hard she fought, no matter how skilled she was. 

Something like static rises beneath her skin, something dark and fueled by self-loathing. It ran like fire in her veins, hot and writhing and fighting its way to the surface, and this is it, Bernadetta thinks, this is magic-

Before it sputters out and a flicker of flames die on her fingertips.

“It was a good attempt,” Dorothea nods reassuringly, but Bernadetta already knows that success will never find her. 

That, at least, never changes. 

—

Dorothea is equally apologetic and encouraging after their session is over, and Bernadetta hastens to reassure her as anxiety nips at her throat.

But it was still a victory, because Dorothea’s smiles come with more ease, and Bernadetta knows the basics for spell casting even though magic refuses to bubble up beneath her fingertips.

They part when the sun rises high in the sky, and there is a distinct clatter and sound from the dining hall. But Bernadetta can’t imagine going in there. The mere thought was suffocating, even though she knows she should.

In the end she forces herself up the steps to the library, ducking past Seteth’s stern gaze. She enters through the doors and smells the scent of old paper and sees spines and spines of books all stacked neatly on the shelves. 

Tomas greets her with a kindly smile, and for a wild moment Bernadetta freezes and her fingers itch for an arrow to fill them before she remembers that there was nothing to fear, not yet.

Solon was an enemy, an object of Edelgard’s disgust, but he wouldn’t dare upend his carefully crafted disguise now. Not until Remire village, and that was months and months away.

Carefully she refuses his aid and looks to the endless sea of knowledge on the shelf. There should be information on hero’s relics here, but she has no idea where to find them. A small part of her regrets turning away Solon’s help.

Sighing quietly to herself, Bernadetta begins the search.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot will happen next chapter :D


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Emotionally charged bros make up. 
> 
> Felix talks to Sylvain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im sorry I promised plot but this needed to happen 😔 I had an outline but I threw it out the window and it landed in a fire and I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m writing

It takes him far too long to notice Sylvain at the entrance.

Felix is too caught up in whipping this body back into shape, relearning maneuvers that he knew like the back of his hand. Forcing his body into compliance was slow progress, but he was rewarded when he could switch between different forms fluidly, wielding his unusually light sword between his hands with ease.

For a long stretch of time Felix pretends like he doesn’t see him, but Sylvain waits with his arms crossed over his chest. There is a glint in his eyes that Felix knows well, and he knows that he won’t be able to leave until he has confronted him. 

Inwardly cursing his stubbornness, Felix sheathes his sword and strolls over to the redhead. 

“Was there something you needed?” Felix asks, infusing as much snark as he could into his voice.

“Was there something I-of course there’s something I need!” Sylvain exclaims, “I need you to look me in the eyes, first of all.” 

His voice is heavy, demanding for Felix to comply in the tense pause after. Slowly, he does. His eyes raise from the floor to his uniform, to his chin, to his eyes. He almost looks away again because of the sheer innocence he finds there, marking him as an imposter, as an unknown. 

This isn’t his Sylvain. He knows it is unfair but he can’t help but miss the Sylvain he left on Gronder Field, the one who was his teammate and closest friend and kept him sane while the boar prince raged. 

This Sylvain is so young that it hurts to look at him, who knew nothing of taking lives, of burying his friends, of being forced to kill them. 

“Now,” Sylvain tells him, his voice wavering, “I need you to tell me what I did wrong.” 

It is Felix’s turn to splutter. “What you did wrong?” He repeats, and the cold melts away into frazzled shock. “No, you didn’t do anything wrong.” _It’s me, it’s all me._

“Well then why won’t you look at me?” His voice echoes across the empty training grounds. “Just a few days ago you were fine, but then you crash into me one morning looking scared. Then you won’t talk to me, and you won’t sit with me. You won’t even look me in the eye without me forcing you to!”

“I’m fine!” Felix snarls, knowing it was in vain, but Sylvain shakes his head with a mirthless laugh.

“We both know that’s a lie, Felix. It’s always a lie.” His eyes are covered again, like pools of hazel, and then Felix notices their depths. They are shielded and bitter and far too familiar, and Felix takes a step back and really _sees_ him for the first time.

Felix doesn’t know how he had forgotten. He doesn’t know how six years has blinded him to the fact that even now, a few months into the academy, Sylvain knows hurt. 

Sylvain knows suffering and he knows pain, and while this isn’t _his_ Sylvain, it is still Sylvain nevertheless. This is the Sylvain who he had fished out of a well, the Sylvain he had promised to die with back when they were children.

And then regret seeps into him like ice in the back of his throat, and when he speaks, his words are quiet. “I’m sorry.” 

He doesn’t know what for. Maybe for leaving him behind on that field. Maybe for hurting him now. But Sylvain’s lips still quirk in that little exhausted smile of his, and Felix knows he was given the forgiveness that he doesn’t deserve.

“It’s alright,” Sylvain says, and he looks tired, as if all of the anger had been drained from him. The relief Felix feels is both overwhelming and punishing at the same time. He does not deserve this, but he craves something to cling to in this empty sea he finds himself in, pulling Sylvain down with him like a drowning man.

Felix shakes his head to clear himself of such thoughts, willing himself to stay steady through these moments of tentative peace. He searches for something, anything to fill the silence burdened by far too many emotions than Felix was comfortable with.

“Do you want to go to lunch?” Is all Felix can come up with, and it comes our sharper than he intends it to. But Sylvain only gives him a smile, a real smile that chases the shadows away and says,

“I thought you’d never ask.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bernadetta leads herself down a rabbit hole

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh Bern, you’ve just gotten yourself into a mess.
> 
> And to everyone who has followed this story- I apologize for leaving you for a month! I decided I didn’t like how slowly the plot was progressing, and while I have ideas, I need to refine them. I’ve been keeping my eye on other projects instead, but rest assured that I WILL get back to this one and improve it!
> 
> Thank you for your continued support ❤️

“There’s better places to sleep than on a book, Bernadetta. I should know.”

Bernadetta jolts into awareness to find Linhardt staring down at her with disinterested eyes.

“I-I wasn’t sleeping!” She exclaims, sitting up straight in her chair. The library was empty around them, and judging by the darkness of the windows, it was late.

“Sure.” Linhardt looked doubtful. “Though you can sleep on that particular book all you like. It’s virtually worthless.”

Bernadetta looked down at the book. “Really?” It was astonishing how he knew what she was reading just from the text. He must spend a lot of time at the library...Bernadetta sits up in realization. 

“Wait Linhardt! Do you know of any books on Hero’s Relics?” 

He turns to her. There is a sudden glint in his eyes that Bernadetta knows is his curiosity being piqued. “It’s interesting you would ask me that question,” he brings his fingers to his lip in thought, and Bernadetta wonders if she made a mistake. But he barges on before she can begin to fear. “Though there aren’t that many books on them. For some reason, Seteth filters them out.”

“What?” She exclaims, her heart plummeting to her feet. Was all of that time spent combing through books wasted?

“It all depends on what you want to know. There’s plenty of books on the houses they belong to-“ She cuts him off firmly. 

“I’ve already seen those. What I need to know are their uses.” 

He tilts his head, before waving his hand dismissively. “Claude could tell you that, but you won’t find any books on those here.” He yawns, apparently having lost the glimmer of interest he had. 

But Bernadetta doesn’t mind, because her head spins with a new trail to follow as she darts out of the library.

She needs to find Claude, and fast.

-

It ends up taking a while to find him.

Not because he was particularly elusive, though that was a reason too, but because she forgot it was the middle of the night. She had to sneak up back to her dorm room and struggle to fall asleep because of the excitement buzzing through her veins. 

She ended up catching him in the doorway of the dining hall, to which he looked at her in surprise.

“Bernadetta,” he said, easily slotting a grin into place, “What can I do for you?”

Her hands shook. It was either now or never. 

“I need to find some books.” She looked him in the eye. “Ones that aren’t in the library.”

There was a gap of silence, filled only by the sound of clattering dishes in the distance. Claude’s eyes turned sharp, and his smile became more calculating. 

“I’m sure I can help you with that,” he smiled. “Meet me behind the dorms at dusk.” He began to walk away, before throwing over his shoulder, “And be sure to wear a cloak with a hood!”

Bernadetta was left staring after him, bewildered. 

She wondered what she had gotten herself into.


End file.
